This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/958,844, filed Dec. 18, 2007, now U.S. Pat. No 8,775,577, which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The Internet, sometimes called simply “the Net,” is a worldwide system of computer networks in which a client at any one computer may, with permission, obtain information from any other computer. The most widely used part of the Internet is the World Wide web, often abbreviated “WWW,” which is commonly referred to as “the web.” The web may be defined as all the resources (e.g., web pages and web sites) and users on the Internet that use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or variations thereof to access the resources. A web site is a related collection of web files that includes a beginning file called a home page. From the home page, the user may navigate to other web pages on the web site. A web server program is a program that, using the client/server model and HTTP, serves the files that form the web pages of a web site to the web users, whose computers contain HTTP client programs (e.g., web browsers) that forward requests and display responses. A web server program may host one or more web sites.
Configuration Management Systems
Various configuration management systems for managing configurations (e.g., installations of application environments) on computing systems over a network exist. These systems tend to be directed at specific vendors' applications or suites of products, and specific to particular hardware and/or software platforms. Furthermore, these systems tend to rely on agents or daemons that reside on the computing systems and perform management (e.g., verification) tasks in the background. Administrators tend to be wary of agents and daemons that run on their systems to perform various tasks for the most part outside of their control or knowledge. In addition, agents and daemons typically communicate with applications running remotely on some server or servers over the network. Such communications between an agent or daemon on a client system and a remote server may be difficult or impossible from client systems behind firewalls or Network Address Translation (NAT) servers.
Web Services
Generally speaking, a web service interface may be configured to provide a standard, cross-platform API (Application Programming Interface) for communication between a client requesting some service to be performed and the service provider. In some embodiments, a web service interface may be configured to support the exchange of documents or messages including information describing the service request and response to that request. Such documents, or messages, may be exchanged using standardized web protocols, such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), for example, and may be formatted in a platform-independent data format, such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML), for example.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.